Page:Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam.djvu/32

Rh intelligent, bold, and for the most part honest; few intending long to remain, few dreaming of the great city to arise here; few caring how the town should be made, if one were made at all. When was improvised an alcalde after the Mexican fashion, and two boards of aldermen were established after the New York fashion, and the high officials saw that they could now and then pick up a twenty-five-dollar fee for deeding a fifty vara lot, if so be they had on hand some fifty varas, they forthwith went to work to make them by drawing lines in front of the cove and intersecting them at right angles by lines running up over the hills, giving their own names, with a sprinkling of the names of bear-flag heroes, not forgetting the usual Washington and Jackson, leaving in the centre a plaza, the cove in front to be filled in later. The streets were narrow, dusty in summer and miry in winter. Spanish-American streets are usually thirty-six feet wide.